Meet the Kindle Killer: Sizing Up Barnes & Noble's Nook

By now, you know that bookish mega-chain debuted the Nook, a dual-screen rival to Amazon's Kindle, which will be available in late November for $259. We went to the press conference earlier this week to see if it's worth all the attention. Here's what we learned:

What's good:
- It's sleek and minimalist—too minimalist, in fact, for an actual keyboard, like the Kindle's. So don't expect to do any editing.
- It knows how vain we are. B&N enlisted designers like Jack Spade, Jonathan Adler, and Elie Tahari to design quality, sharp-looking cases. See below.
- It's in color. The bright touch screen at the bottom isn't just a gimmick. You'll be able to flick through menus, bookmark pages, and type in titles on the touch keyboard, something you couldn't do on the Kindle DX's cramped keys.
- You can share. Users can lend books to a friend, regardless of whether they want to read them on a Nook, a cell phone (as if), or their computer.
- The Nook is the first e-reader to run on Google's Android OS. This doesn't mean much now, but the software will let companies outside of B&N develop programs and applications down the line. The possibilities are (almost) endless.
-Free books! The Nook promises access to half a million books Google has acquired.

What's not:
- Remember that much-touted lending feature? Well, not all the available books will be lendable. That'll depend on the book and B&N's relationship with the publishing house and author. Also, your friend can only hold onto that borrowed book for a library-like 14 days, and while he's reading it, you can't. Unfortunately, B&N took realism a little too far here.
- About those free books you can download? Um, they mostly suck. For every White Teeth, there are 10 titles like On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.
- The Apple tablet is rumored to be coming in March.—jp mangalindan